


Drum Beats Out of Time

by ARandomFactoid



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Everything that lives dies, Found Family, Multi, everyone dies, how everyone dies eventually, non graphic deaths, not like rocks fall everyone dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARandomFactoid/pseuds/ARandomFactoid
Summary: What if they were meant to find each other at the end as well as at the beginning?Also -  Imagine the last scene of the last episode of the TV show "Six Fee Under" but make it The Old Guard.Snippet:Standing in the doorway… is Nicky.  Tall and unbowed, wearing the same hoodie and combat boots from this morning, leaning against the doorway, the sword in Joe’s hand also at Nicky’s waist.Joe drops Nicky’s sword, and his own.Nicky stands straight, pulling his hood back, and closes the distance between them.  Looking down at Joe and taking his face in both hands, Nicky kisses him as soundly as the very first time, so very long ago.“What took you so long?” Joe breaths, tears in his eyes.Nicky chuckles and tilts his head towards the control room that had been plan A before it all went to hell, “We could do some good.” he answers.Joe takes his hand and they run.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Lykon/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 11
Kudos: 74





	Drum Beats Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be clear: EVERYONE DIES. Not at the same time, in various ways (see end notes for death spoilers if you want to check to see if you need to nope out). That said, I try to keep it very non-graphic and suffering to a minimum. This story is more about the moments leading up to death than about the cause and/or aftermath.
> 
> Take care of yourselves, I won't take it personal if you need to close out the tab without leaving kudos or comments (I won't even know, but it wouldn't bother me if I could know.)

They were always going to lose Andy too soon, but it wasn’t supposed to be  _ this soon _ . She didn’t get to grow old, or go out in a blaze of righteous glory wielding her labrys. Andy got sick, and when she told them to they brought her home so she could be with all of them as themselves without disguise or artifice. Copley took charge, rented a house for them to call a home, vetted the nurses who taught them how to take care of her, even kept tabs on all of them to make sure they were still on their feet to be there for Andy when the time came.

It was a slow end. A merciless drag they were all loath to have conclude because it would mean the end of Andy, and what then? The end did come, just before sunrise that final day they would all be together, Andy brightened, her glassy eyes looking around at all of them and stopping in an empty corner.

“Lykon?” Andy whispered into the room. “It’s time, isn’t it?”

Andy reached for Nicky at her right, grabbing his hand weakly in hers, her eyes moving from Joe further down the bed and the empty corner. With a shuddering breath, she leaned back into her pillows.

“Tell Quynh. When you find her, tell her. Lykon came. Tell her. We aren’t alone.”

With a final tilt of her head, she gave a final smirk for Nile and Booker, and Andromache the Scythian breathed her last.

They burn her body in the fields surrounding the house. They purchase it and the land surrounding it, and when James Copley dies some years later, it is in this house, surrounded by this family.

-

Quynh doesn’t replace Andy the same way Nile never replaced Booker for those hundred years (more or less) of exile. She’s another piece of their family to gather up in their arms and shelter with their hearts when she reappears, as fierce and wounded as Andy ever was, but travels the world in a way uniquely her own. Their paths weft and weave in new directions, and for so many years they are content.

They are in a chartered plane full of refugees they’ve been escorting when she sees them, sitting side by side in jump seats that were empty just a moment before. Quynh goes to her knees in the middle of the aisle between them and Nile who’d been following behind.

“It was true, what they said, when you died?” she asks Andy. “You were there?” she addresses Lykon. 

Nile kneels behind her, touching her shoulder. “Are you ok?”

Quynh looks over her shoulder at Nile, then back at her lost loves, reaching out to take their offered hands as they nod. “I’d forgotten,” she answers, “how beautiful they were. I think something is wrong.”

They have some time, minutes, is what Quynh explains as her family surrounds her. The engines will fail, but they can still save the people - they, Andy and Lykon, think. Quynh insists the others go to the back of the plane with the mortal pilots and the refugees. She will land the plane. She won’t be alone, she promises. Andy and Lykon are standing behind her, invisible to everyone else as Nicky hugs her one last time, as Joe kisses her forehead and accepts one in turn, as Nile givers her a teary high five and fist bump, as Booker smooths a lock of Quynh’s long black hair back into her braid and kisses both her cheeks. She steps backwards into the cockpit, closing the door without ever turning away.

Quynh keeps them from crashing into the sea, and clears the houses, it is called a miracle that she is the only casualty.

-

Time passes, the world ebbs and flows and their purpose with it. New ones die a mortal death and are reborn to their immortal family. Then, one day, Nicky takes a chest-full of bullets to stop a nuclear blast from destroying a city of millions - he doesn’t drop dead; he doesn’t heal either. It was worth it, they couldn’t stop the reactor’s melt-down but he cut down the bastard with the explosives meant to make it worse. The others can put out a warning, people would have time to evacuate.

Joe is there, on his knees and his hands fluttering. Their eyes lock and Joe knows, pressing their foreheads together as Nicky gasps and claws at Joe’s shoulder to tell him:

“Andy” he gasps through his closing throat, his eyes flicking away briefly and locking back to Joe.

“Is she here, my heart?” Joe asks, sighing when Nicky nods. “Then go, my love. Go with Andy. I love you. And I know you love me. I… will help the others and look forward to when you come for me.”

Nicky chokes a breath and raises a hand into the air, and Joe knows it’s Andy helping Nicky up and out of this life as the light fades in his eyes. Joe takes a breath, then another, then taking Nicky’s sword he takes to his feet and runs.

-

There is no time. The entire facility will go up, people will die unless they do something - this is what keeps Joe moving one foot in front of the other. When he catches up to Nile all he can answer to her “Where’s Nicky?” is “With Andy.” She staggers, but he catches her elbow and keeps her moving. Booker seems to be able to tell just by the look on their faces. The young ones are ahead, already pulling out and contacting the authorities. There’s a final pocket of resistance between them and the exit - Joe provides cover fire while Nile and Booker push though and obliterate them. The delay makes him the last in the building, he rounds the final corner and standing in the doorway…

Standing in the doorway… is Nicky. Tall and unbowed, wearing the same hoodie and combat boots from this morning, leaning against the doorway, the sword in Joe’s hand also at Nicky’s waist.

Joe drops Nicky’s sword, and his own.

Nicky stands straight, pulling his hood back, and closes the distance between them. Looking down at Joe and taking his face in both hands, Nicky kisses him as soundly as the very first time, so very long ago.

“What took you so long?” Joe breaths, tears in his eyes.

Nicky chuckles and tilts his head towards the control room that had been plan A before it all went to hell, “We could do some good.” he answers.

Joe takes his hand and they run.

Andy is waiting for them, with Quynh and Lykon’s already at command terminals, ready to tell Joe what he needs to do to bring down the facility and avert the blast. He takes a moment to just look at them all, dressed for war. Andy and Quynh look as he last knew them, modern and deadly with their ancient weapons strapped to their back and legs. That Lykon looks similar, he can’t stop to consider what it means. 

Lykon smiles at him and says, “There is a radio to your left. We should let the family know what is happening.”

He does. Joe finds the frequency and tells them Nicky has him. Confirms when Booker asks if the others are there. He tells them all that they are so very loved and switches the radio back off. Joe reaches for Nicky and their eyes meet for Joe’s last moment on this Earth.

-

Booker freezes to death. Because of course he does. 

Mother-fucking-Russia. 

Helf of the world is too hot to live in and his last mission is right back where he started this life. Sebastien le Livre’s life really was a story-book, a cautionary tale if there ever was one. It was right there in the name. He knew this could happen, staying behind to man the emergency radio while the others pressed on. He just hadn’t told the others yet, that his clock had started ticking again. It had been so long since losing Joe and Nicky, and the signal so innocuous, a nick while shaving, he hadn’t wanted the others to worry.

Maybe he just wasn’t ready.

Then the plan had gone wrong, and the others had gotten bogged down in the research station during a storm, and Booker’s generator quit and gave up the ghost. Given everything, it isn’t exactly a surprise when Joe and Nicky come waltzing in cursing the snow in their usual archaic litany - Booker would laugh if he could lift his head from where he slumped in front of the radio.

The tuxes are, however, unexpected.

Joe hops up onto the table next to him, depositing a thermos in front of his face.

“Unfortunately you can’t have this until, well, after.” Joe tells him, brushing a few snowflakes from a very shiny lapel. “And we didn’t choose the dress code. It will all make sense in a few minutes. I have it on very good authority this is your favorite hot toddy recipe.” he adds, a mischievous grin on his face Booker can imagine how to decipher. He is getting very tired.

Nikcy sidels in between Joe’s legs and Booker’s chair, his face close enough to Booker the could feel each other’s breath, if they were both still living, breathing men. He looks Booker in the eye. “You need to tell Nile. We do not want her to wonder or be surprised by this. Do you remember the code we use when we cannot talk? The code you used for ‘Joe and Nicky’ yes? Just that, try to do that. So Nile knows.”

Booker does try, and taps the code on the handset, nearly frozen fingers flexing ‘JoexNickywithJoexNicky’ before he drops it to the table.

“Thank you, Booker.” Nicky touches his shoulder. “It’s almost time.”

The light changes, darker, softer, candles. The table changes and more voices filter through the sound of glassware clinking and silverware against china. There is familiar laughter, Andromache and Quynh and… and… before he can accept or deny his every wish come true, a small hand alights on his shoulder. “Sebastien? Mon Amour?”

“ Amélie ? ”

-

Nile is the only one who gets to grow old, to grow into the matriarch role that holds their family together as they scatter and come back together over the years. She spends most of her time at their main home base these days, back on that land where Andy spent her last. The house has been rebuilt many times, but they’ve held onto the land through the ages and everything the world has thrown at them. It is comforting here, surrounded by the things left behind by those she’s loved, living and dead; in an ever-changing museum of cultures come and gone, priceless art, old letters, a room of nothing but beyond ancient weapons, including a pair of mis-matched swords stored in state-of-the-art radiation shielding hung in the place of honor above the mantle. There’s a nineteenth century forgers’ kit floating around. The labrys hangs over the front door, Quynh’s bow above the side door that leads to the gardens. Those and a hundred more artefacts Nile has gathered for her successors to remember what was after she has left them to it.

Lykon visits her first, she comes across him in the hall where a sketch of Joe’s has been hung. It’s of Andromache, Quynh, and Lykon, as Andy had described to Joe in those last weeks before her passing. It’s a very good likeness.

Lykon bows to her in greeting. “It is an honor to finally meet you, grandmother.” he says solemnly, before rising to meet her indignance with a shit-eating grin that would earn him a swat if the situation were any different. “The others are on their way. There is still some time, yet.” he explains. “If you wanted to call the young ones home?”

“No.” she decides quickly. “They are as ready for this as they will ever be. The mission comes first.”

Andy and Quynh arrive that night, whispering with Lykon on the porch as Nile drinks tea in her favorite recliner, watching the moon through the large windows that look out onto the meadow. They hover in the doorway until Nile huffs and laughs at them. “You’d think I was the one who died in this room. Get in here and give me a hug.”

They do, it’s a lovely night of laughter and stories. The sky is almost pink with dawn before Nile finds herself guided to her bed. When she wakes it is late afternoon and Joe and Nicky are waiting on the couch, so wrapped up in eachother when she walks in she walks past them entirely until she bursts into laughter in the kitchen. She laughs until she cries, looking back at Nicky and Joe’s confused faces over the back of the couch, explaining through gasping laughs “When Booker gets here he owes me fifty bucks. Two most loved-up men who ever lived, I swear.”

“Fifty bucks with interest is… so much money.” Joe muses. “You might have Booker in hawk for a few centuries.” he adds. “It’s so good to see you. Love the hair. The grey suits you.”

Nicky rises, pulling Joe with you. “We will join you for your breakfast, Nile.” he says, pulling Joe along. “Then would you like to show us the house? I recognize so much of it.”

Nile nods, crooking a finger over her shoulder as she turns and leads them through to the kitchen table.

When Booker arrives, just after lunch, she almost doesn’t recognize him. He’s so much more… ‘at peace’ he supplies when she tries to explain as they catch up on the patio while they watch the others kick around a soccer ball further out on the lawn. He is maddeningly short on details about himself, they all have been. “Spoilers.” is all he answers when she asks him why he can’t, or won’t, say. He shifts his hat to better block the sun that glides lower in the sky and calls out a penalty against Andy’s illegal handball, and awarding a goal to Joe and Nicky’s team. 

“They think I favor the guys.” he winks at Nile. “Three on two, I always favor the underdog.” Booker leans back. “This is nice.”

“It is.” Nile agrees.

When it gets late, they drift throughout the house. NIcky sits with Nile as she types up her final message to her living family. It takes time, she leaves a few lines for everyone. She has lived so much longer than any of them, they are almost her children, almost. He listens to her stories as she types, and he seems so young it aches that he’s just a ghost created by her mind as her life fades out. She has and hasn’t believed what they said as they left this life behind, it came and went with her other faiths. What if it wasn’t true? What if it was? When she finishes her goodbyes and hits send she panics - she hadn’t mentioned the other’s arrival. The faith, it comes and goes, and goes and comes. Nicky sees this, he always has, and takes her hand.

“You have time. One more message. Quickly now - we see them, know them, love them, and will come for them too. We have you safe and sound.”

Nile types and hits send, the relief is instant. Nicky smiles and takes her hand. “Now coffee?” he rises and she prepares to use his arm to pull her old and tired body out of the chair and it’s so surprisingly easy she stops and stares at Nicky.

He turns them both slightly towards the window, their reflection clear against the dark outside. “I was curious, how you would choose to be,” he wonders, “ after, the same as when you knew us or the same as you were now.” 

Nile looks back at herself, the stately grey-haired lady left behind clutching a tablet in her favorite comfortable chair. She seemed to be sleeping. She looks at her reflection, part of her is annoyed. She earned that grey hair, and those lines, got all the way through this life and built so much good. The other part knows this is how she always thought of herself, eternally twenty four, and anyone who underestimated her needed to watch out.

She loops her arm in the crook of Nicky’s elbow. “Coffee sounds good.” She lets Nicky lead her away. “And then?” she asks.

“I don’t know about you, but you have a lovely home. I think it would be nice to stay for some time.” 

“Yeah.” she agrees, and turns her thoughts to the sounds of her family coming from the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> It was cathartic for me, I hope it was for you too. Be safe, be well as can be hoped for. <3.
> 
> Shout out to my SO for giving me the very same name I was thinking of when I was trying to pick out a name for Booker's wife (great minds lol)
> 
> As mentioned in the beginning notes - Deaths: illness (unspecified by name or symptoms), plane crash (non specific injuries), gun shots (chest, some choking on blood), building collapse (non specific injuries), hypothermia/freezing to death, old age.


End file.
